


Marauders Advent Calendar: Day 3

by chillsoya



Series: The Marauders Advent Calendar [3]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Christmas Movies, Christmas sickfic, Cold Weather, Cuffing season, F/M, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, James is going soft, Lily is grumpy, Medical student Lily, Muggle AU, Neurology student James, Sick Fic, University AU, jily, vaguely festive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 02:43:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12902244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chillsoya/pseuds/chillsoya
Summary: Lily always overworks herself, even when she's coming down with a cold. James steps in when she finally admits defeat.





	Marauders Advent Calendar: Day 3

Doctors are apparently the worst patients, but no one warned James about medical students.

James Potter and Lily Evans share one module, molecular biology, at university. James is following in his mother’s footsteps as a neurologist, whereas Lily is studying medicine.

They were decidedly not close before that year. The only reason they had come into contact in the first place was through their shared friend, Remus, an art major. Lily had tried very hard to hate James, but he was the only one in their friend group who made her tea right and didn’t say anything out loud about the amount of sugar she requested.

That being said, she didn’t appreciate how overbearing he could be.

“Lily, you’re making yourself sick with all this stress,” James chides, bringing her a takeaway cup full to the brim with tea to her preferred library table. She glowers up at him and quickly pockets her packet of tissues.  
“Stress doesn’t make you sick, James. That’s an old wife’s tale. Now maybe mind your own business and do some studying so you can actually pass this module?”

James was used to tough loving from Lily and the rest of his friends alike. This time, however, he knew that Lily was only doling out the insults to try and hide the fact she knew he was right.

Whether or not stress could actually make you ill, James knew Lily wasn’t helping matters for herself. It was early December, everyone was cosying up for Christmas during cuffing season, but Lily was shirking all her social duties to get a head start on next semester.

She had so far managed to ignore her own symptoms of coming down with a cold; the sniffling into her cardigan sleeves and dozing off in class. If she thought everyone else would, though, she was sorely mistaken. James was a mother hen at heart and hated seeing her overwork herself like this, but every time he brought it up she threw herself into her revision with even more zeal.

“You’ve drooled on your mind map,” James points out with a half concerned, half amused smile. Lily blinks some sleep from her eyes and looks down at the smudged ink on her page.  
“Oh.”  
“You’re ill.”  
“That shouldn’t give you any satisfaction, James. And I’m not ill!”

-

Apparently attending classes, volunteering for two different organisations and working a 12 hour contract at the campus coffee shop wasn’t too much.

Lily is the only one who thinks that. 

-

She must have admitted defeat at some point, because James turns up to their 9am molecular biology class and finds her missing from her usual front row seat. He leaves the lecture five minutes early, knowing that she’ll be in her flat hardly looking after herself, and picks up a few things from the grocery store.

What a stubborn idiot Lily is sometimes.

She’s curled up on her couch under a thin blanket, sniffling into a crumpled up, overused tissue. James grimaces.  
“That’s grotty, Lily.” He takes the tissue from her hand and puts it on the table.  
“Can’t reach the box,” she sighs regretfully, rubbing some sleep from her eyes.

It turns out Lily pulled a nightshift at the student mental health organisation she volunteers with. It was one step too far, and by the end of the night she had ran out of tissues in her usually well stocked handbag. She recounted this incredibly begrudgingly to James.  
“Don’t you dare say I told you so. This was totally a fluke.”  
“Sure it was,” James demurred, standing up to gather up the used tissues.

-

James is not a natural cook, something he has to force himself not to focus on or the chicken noodle soup would smell his fear and spoil. When he brings a bowl of thankfully passable soup through, Lily looks up at him and scoffs.  
“Is that chicken noodle?”  
“Yeah, duh,” he rolls his eyes, Lily mirroring him and crossing her arms around the bottle of lukewarm water she’s been nursing for half an hour.  
“That’s not actually a cure, you know. Not even a little bit scientific.”

Two minutes later after some quick googling, James puts his phone down with a smirk.  
“Well, according to the University of Nebraska, chicken noodle soup has anti-inflammatory properties.”  
Lily doesn’t reply, just eats the soup with a bit more aggression.

Once the dishes are done, James plops down on the floor by the couch with a gentle huff. Lily stares at the back of his head.  
“You’re going to get sick, y’know, hanging about like this.”  
“Nah, coughs and sneezes spread diseases; I’m keeping well away from you when you do that.”  
“I… Are you kidding me?” Lily gapes, smug but incredulous. “I mean, that’s total bullshit. Your mum let you believe that? Cold and flu virus can survive for like, hours on surfaces.”

James looks back at her, trying to decide if she’s joking.

“I’m gonna wash my hands,” he mumbles, hauling himself to his feet again.

-

“Don’t let me sleep for more than half an hour,” Lily threatens, scowling up at James who only looks down at her, unimpressed. “I’m serious, James - I’m not messing up my sleep schedule for a tiny cold.”  
“Tiny cold,” James quotes with a snort, pushing on Lily’s shoulders to make her lie down flat on the couch. “Yeah, yeah, whatever Lily.”

She’s been resisting sleep for ages, now. Earlier, she insisted James make her a coffee so she could stay awake. He pretended to agree, only to make her a decaf and watch her get steadily more tired.

“Need to make a plan for this essay,” Lily complained, swatting at James when he tried to move her laptop out of her reach.  
“Sod the essay, Lily, it isn’t due until January.” Lily fixed him with a look.  
“Some of us are actually taking our degrees seriously, James.”

It’s a small victory to see her finally doze off. James smiles, for once not tempted to take pictures of her squashed up sleeping face; he just wants her to rest. God, he must be going soft.

When Lily began to wake up some two hours later, James sat down on the arm of the couch to smooth her hair back from her eyes. In the time that she had been sleeping, he had watered her plants and wiped down all the surfaces in her flat, her fact from earlier resounding in his mind. He really didn’t like being ill.

“What time’s it?” Lily mumbles, trying to sit up.  
“Just after 5,” James lets her know, feeling fondness well up in his chest when she looks up at him blearily, her nose as red as her hair. The serenity of the moment is killed off quickly after that, Lily jolting upright so fast her head spins, looking around wildly for her laptop.  
“I told you to wake me up!” she whines, scrambling for the tissue box as a sneeze creeps up on her.  
“I’m gonna make tea,” James excuses, slipping out of the room in case she tries to throw something at him.

He knows Lily probably won’t appreciate him not making her usual tea, but Fleamont always vouched by echinacea for colds so that’s what he brought over this morning. 

“What the fuck is this, Potter?” Lily snaps, having apparently given up on finding her laptop. James insistently presses the mug into her hands despite her protests.  
“Echinacea. It’s good for colds,” he informs her matter-of-factly, putting down a bottle of multivitamins on the table.  
“You are such a housewife, James,” Lily snorts, sipping at the sweetened tea with a sigh.  
“Nothing wrong with that,” James retorts, crossing his arms. Lily hums thoughtfully and shrugs.  
“Next thing I know, you’ll be getting out the apples,” Lily sighs. James avoids her gaze with a rueful smile. “Oh my god you bought apples, didn’t you?”

-

“Elf is a far superior movie,” Lily informs him curtly, reaching for the remote. James holds it away from his body so that she can’t get to it, because she’s still self conscious enough not to climb over him.  
“I like The Holiday, though,” James grumbles, pressing play despite Lily’s complaints.   
“It’s heartwarming.”  
“What isn’t heartwarming about Will Ferrell?!” Lily snaps, exasperated. James tosses her an apple while he starts pigging out on a festive packet of Pringles.  
“The fact that his incredibly loud voice will give you a headache, maybe?”  
“Ugh, stop trying to be the smart one, James.”

Half way into the movie, James is fully invested but Lily is periodically glancing over to him.  
“You’re not just being nice to me to get me to go on a date with you, are you?” she asks him eventually, giving him a suspicious look. James returns her look, mildly offended as he hits pause.  
“You think that I don’t care about you as a friend?”  
“No, it’s not that, just…”  
“There’s no ulterior motive here, Lily,” James sighs, looking back to the paused movie frozen on Jude Law’s ridiculously good looking face. He touches his messy hair self consciously, shuffling to get comfier because tension has descended upon them despite the fact that they have been getting on perfectly well until now.

They finish watching The Holiday in silence, not making any sarcastic quips at each other or cracking jokes. The string lights on the tree are giving Lily a headache and she tries to find the ibuprofen on her own. James notices and goes to find them for her, coming back with a glass of orange juice and two pills.

Once she’s swallowed them down, she looks at James guiltily.

“I’m sorry I doubted you, James,” she sighs, ducking her head. James smiles winningly and shrugs, obviously trying to brush off her oblique rejection.  
“S’fine, don’t worry about it. I know I’ve been a dick enough in the past to make you think that I’d do something like that.”  
“But it’s not fair, is it? You’ve been so lovely to me today when you should have been at classes, and I made you think I don’t appreciate it.”  
“How’d you know I was supposed to be at classes?” James frowns, wondering when he ever told Lily his timetable. She looks away from him awkwardly, wringing her hands together.  
“I… Might have checked. Just, y’know, for when we were studying together, so I didn’t suggest a time you couldn’t do…”

James laughs, shaking his head at her.  
“Is that right, yeah?” he asks, tilting his head. Lily flushes violently and pulls her turtleneck over her face to try and hide it. “Hey, it’s fine, c’mon. We’ve all done weird stuff like that before.”  
“It wasn’t weird! That’s why I did it, I mean it!”  
“Okay, okay, I believe you,” James concedes, a sly smile on his face. Lily peeks over the neck of her jumper and scowls.  
“No you don’t.”  
“Okay, you’re right, I don’t.”  
“Sod off, Potter,” she grumbles, only coming out of her hiding place because it was ridiculously warm in there. James shrugs and stands up to comply.  
“Alright then. I left orange juice in the fridge, apples in the fruit bowl-”  
“No! Don’t go!” James eyes her, amused and confused at the same time. “I mean, uh, you can if you like but… I might drown in my own snot?”  
“Gross, Lily,” he teases, plopping back down on the couch. Lily flips him off nonchalantly before shuffling to sit against his side, nuzzling against him. James grins and drapes an arm over her shoulder. 

“You just asking me to stay because you want me to go on a date with you?”  
“Shut up, Potter!”


End file.
